Wolfe's last words instantly broke Zemar's crumbling psychological defenses.

Perhaps because the Ottoman navy had been weakened for so long in the time of Hamid II, Zemar, who had just taken over as Lord of the Admiralty, was cautious in his work, completely devoid of the surging enthusiasm of his Al-Shabaab comrades. At present, he has set only a relatively limited goal for naval development, which is to reassert maritime superiority over Greece and Bulgaria in the Balkans and to stand tall under the pressure of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

For this reason, when Wolf suggested that German shipyards had a technical advantage over Britain in terms of subsystem technology, Zemar was not very cold. Rather than provoking London in collusion with the Germans, it is better to continue to choose to place orders with the British shipyards with which they are familiar; Anyway, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is mainly based on old ships, and the ships with poor performance purchased by the Russian side can fully cope with it! And when the other side raised the possibility that the British would remain neutral in the war and seize the warships that the Ottoman Navy was waiting for until after the war and then return them, Zemar gritted his teeth and endured it, although he was a little worried. With the two ships of Torgores and the Resadih after the magic change, the Ottoman navy was already qualified to defeat the other side when facing Greece; As for the huge threat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to the northern part of the Asia Minor Peninsula, anyway, it has survived the absolute disadvantage of so many years, and it does not care about waiting for another year and a half. As long as the British could fulfill the delivery, the money spent by the Imperial Navy for modernization was not in vain!

However, when Wolf dissected that the British government might intervene directly in the shipyards and resell the ships that had originally belonged to the Ottomans to the Greeks during the war, Zemar was completely unacceptable. Although this scenario of a battleship turning its head to fight itself would require several successive assumptions to arise. The British would not have refused to refund after doing such an almost robber-like thing; But this is not a weak potential. But it was enough for Zemar to refuse to place an order with a British shipyard. If you have worked so hard to scrape together enough money to buy a battleship, you can't even guarantee its ownership. So what's the point of such arms purchases?

"And if your country had chosen to order from our German shipyard, none of the above would have happened. Deutsche will build the goods you need at full speed, and the construction time will never exceed the time of our own ships of the same type; And as long as conditions permit, even if we use our own naval combatants to operate the ship, we will ensure that the cargo will be delivered to your country in its entirety! Seeing that a fine bead of sweat appeared on Zemar's forehead, and the color of struggle flashed quietly in his eyes, Wolf, who was in charge of sales, was overjoyed in his heart, and hurriedly launched an all-round pursuit of the gold lord in front of him. He paused. Then he threw out a temptation that the minister, who was in desperate need of improving his naval strength, could not refuse: "In addition, as long as your country has signed a purchase agreement with our German shipyard, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince will also allocate a certain percentage of the contract amount from his private account and return your country in the form of a free frigate." At present, your country has only five obsolete regular frigates launched in the early 1890s, and the speed of which is not even 16 knots; Personally, I think the only thing they can do is to be sent to the scrap metal recycling room immediately. ”

Zemar's heart moved, and a subtle look of surprise flashed in his eyes. The top-notch frigates are not as cheap as people think, although their tonnage is only a fraction of that of a capital ship, and their main armament is only a few small guns and some torpedoes. But because of that set for the pursuit of high speed of the strong power. As a result, the tonnage cost of such ships far exceeds that of capital ships that are 100 times larger than them. At present, Zemar is worried about the serious aging of his frigates, and it is undoubtedly a good thing to solve this dilemma for free!

That's it. Zemar finally nodded slowly, and said, "Thank you for your great contribution to strengthening the friendship between Germany and Austria, and there is no longer any need for our country to hesitate." The ailing Ottoman Navy will always be grateful and warmly welcome the bidding of your shipyard to Istanbul. I think the box you are carrying should be full of drawings and models of ships, sir, right? With that, Zemar looked to the side of Wolfe's seat; I saw a huge wooden box of exaggerated size lying flat there, and the ship markings inlaid on it were reflecting a solemn light in the sunlight.

It was only then that Wolf breathed a sigh of relief. Zemar, who took the initiative to bring out what he was carrying, made Wolf almost certain that he would order goods from the two shipyards of Bromforth and Sissau. He looked at the exotic silhouette of the eyebrows in front of him, which was obviously different from the Europeans, and smiled in his eyes, as if he was looking at an expensive ornament with glittering gold, and said leisurely: "Indeed. In order to get orders from your country, we have prepared a total of nearly 30 design proposals, and most of them have been made into detailed models, so that you can have an intuitive feeling of them. Wolf clapped his hands lightly, and one of his men opened the wooden box with skilful movements, and then took out one model after another under Zemar's slightly eager eyes.

"For your country, the greatest threat at sea at the moment is undoubtedly the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The reason why successive tsars would deploy heavy troops in this closed pond and always lay keels on the slipways of the Black Sea shipyards at a constant pace was undoubtedly to cooperate with the army to capture Istanbul in one fell swoop, and to open the Bosphorus Strait, which had restricted their strategic expansion for hundreds of years, by force! For the sake of your own security, your country must also have a powerful navy that can compete head-on with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, or even defeat it. As models filled the table, Wolf automatically assumed the role of a Turk thinker; He paused, and then said aloud, "Therefore, the all-heavy artillery battleship that led the change of the times and kicked all the old ships into the garbage heap is undoubtedly the only choice for your country to realize the dream of quickly catching up with and surpassing the Russian Black Sea Fleet!" ”

"An all-heavy artillery dreadnought?" Zemar's mind was slightly dizzy. The Russian Black Sea Fleet needed to be on guard, but Zemar had no intention of surpassing the Russian navy by leaps and bounds; His previous plan was to buy a new old ship to rival the Potemkin, which was completed in 1903, in order to consolidate the empire's control over the Aegean and southern Black Seas. To this end, he deliberately targeted the Habsburg-class small dreadnoughts mass-produced by Austria-Hungary: this class of ships had sufficient firepower and protection, and could fully form a battlefield advantage over Potemkin, an inferior product made by the Russian copycat American Retvizan. With a standing displacement of just over 10,000 tons, it is quite a small size, and with the Ottoman Navy's existing dock capacity and technical system, it is barely capable of maintaining it independently.

However, once the tonnage of warships is greatly increased, it will undoubtedly be a rather severe test for the Ottoman industrial system, which can only build inferior destroyers on its own. The acquisition of large capital ships meant not only the expansion of the dockyard and docks, but also a series of subsequent after-sales maintenance: the sharp increase in the technical content of various types of precision machinery meant that the Ottoman industrial system, which could only barely focus on the stupid black and coarse, would most likely be helpless against their failures. In order to change this situation, it is necessary to bring in an additional set of heavy equipment from the German factory for the maintenance of this extremely complex murder weapon, and to study it for several years, which is obviously quite a huge expense!

When Zemar explained his considerations to Wolfe, the man in front of him smiled pleasantly, "I knew it would be like this." He waved his hand slightly and said, "Your Excellency, I can fully understand the reason why you have chosen this way. However, no country's army can be fully prepared for the last war alone; The current background of rapid development is forcing us to implement a forward-looking high-speed leap. ”

"At present, the world has entered the era of all-heavy artillery warships, except for a few individual powers and a few former dreadnoughts that have been built for most of them are still under construction, it is impossible for the naval powers to start a new construction of 4-gun capital ships in the traditional sense. Therefore, Russia's next expansion plan for the Black Sea Fleet is bound to be the construction of new dreadnoughts with full heavy guns. If your country chooses such a completely obsolete ship for the sake of temporary convenience, it will indeed be able to defeat Potemkin or even Yevstafi under construction in the years of its new service; However, in the face of the Russian dreadnoughts that followed, such completely obsolete ships would have no room for resistance! ”

Wolf stretched out his right hand and pushed several majestic wooden models straight in front of Zemar, and then said with a sincere face: "Only if your country chooses to buy these dreadnoughts of this type can it truly resist the coming flood of steel from the gray cattle. What's more, a 10,000-ton battleship costs 800,000 pounds no matter how cheap it is, if it can be doubled the price, the battleship can be improved in terms of firepower, protection, maneuverability, and other aspects, so as to obtain a real value that is several times greater than before, then why can't we afford this money? What's more, your country's need to maintain such ships can also drive your country's industrial technology forward from another aspect! (To be continued......)

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